Handy Toyota

This weekend at Japan's Little Tokyo Design Week, a car manufacturer will take center stage in a noncar-centric showing of technologies from around the world.  Toyota, soon to unveil the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in and the Tesla/Toyota joint collaboration the 2012 Toyota Rav4 EV, will show off their latest versions of each at the event and if opinions of the local journalists is any indication the auto giant may very well…

A couple weeks or months ago I had posted a blog and Facebook post to Handy Toyota's blog and page respectively regarding the coming of a new system to Toyota cars called "Entune."  At the time, Toyota Motors themselves were remaining tight-lipped regarding this new feature, and as far as the public is concerned there is hardly anything worth mentioning.

Finally on February 18, 2011, Toyota pulled back the curtain on the program--at least…

A better way to power electric cars? a quest for automakers and seemingly elusive wish of consumers. However, Toyota Motor Co., the world's largest seller of hybrid autos is on it. Their most current initiative is developing a magnesium battery that holds twice the energy of lithium-ion cells. And according to the engineer managing the U.S. project, Jeffrey Makarewiez, the work in Ann Arbor complements other future electric-power chemistries at Toyota labs in…

It was a momentous occasion for Toyota at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. After watching Ford monopolize in-car connectivity for four years and Kia enter the arena last year, the company had the opportunity to unveil its new Entune Multimedia System. Entune will debut on select Toyota models later this year.

Similar to competitors' systems, Toyota's Entune Multimedia System uses drivers' mobile phone data plan for connectivity. Users can simply download the Toyota Entune…

For today's blog, I have a very simple question:  would you like to win access to specials that are only attained by stopping into Handy's?  But before delve into the finality of the question and technically pose it, are you familiar with location based social media?

Alright... let's take a couple steps back.  For those of you who may not know the term, social media refers to many programs that I guarantee…

There's an app for...well pretty much everything these days. And now an Internet Radio app on new Toyota models can help you out of a bind. The Japanese auto maker announced it is working with Clear Channel to integrate a mobile app, iheart radio, into some of its vehicles next year.

The iheart app is currently available for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Phone 7. It lets you listen to more than 750 Clear Channel stations, mostly from specific cities, with a few genre-oriented stations not tied to a particular market.

The auto manufacturers are tripping over themselves attempting to bring EVs and traditional fuel-efficient vehicles to the market.  The Obama administration has mandated higher corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles sold in this country.  For manufacturers that do not meet these standards, steep fines will be incurred.  In essence, they will not be viable and in my opinion will have a very difficult time staying in business.  As the world economy strengthens, the?